Chapter 16
Michael’s Story
“Pass me some of that ice water, will you, Son?” my dad said as he pushed himself up a little higher in his hospital bed.
I held the big container for him as he leaned forward and sucked noisily at the straw.
“So what happened after that?” I asked as he leaned back into his pillows. “What happened to Rusty?”
For the past few hours I had been totally enthralled by his narrative. There were so many questions; I didn’t want it to end here.
“Rusty was never charged in the death of Sgt. Murphy. They did have him talk to a few doctors in the medical corps, and in the end, Capt. Crocker informed us that they were sending Rusty home, with an honourable discharge. He knew as well as the rest of us that this was no place for Rusty.”
“What happened then? With your unit half gone, did they split you up?”
“No. Remember, with the way the war was going right then, nearly everybody’s unit was getting torn apart. No, we got to stay together. They brought in a new sergeant, and boy, he couldn’t have been more different from Sgt. Murphy if he tried. And get this, his name was Kozlowski. Can you imagine how that would have pissed Murphy off?”
I chuckled, having dealt with our own bizarre family name my whole life.
“Yeah, the first time one of us tried to call him ‘Sir’, he said, “What the hell is this ‘Sir’ business? You can call me Sarge or Kowzer; forget any of that ‘Sir’ shit.” You wouldn’t believe how we smiled after he said that.
“Along with the new sergeant, Sam was promoted to corporal, something that was long overdue. We had some new guys put with us, but those other three; Sam, Harry and Chester; we were together until the end.”
“Did you guys stay under the command of Capt. Crocker?”
“Yep, right until the day we shipped home. He was great. I never met anyone I’ve respected more. He stuck by us through everything, every single day, and those next few weeks were incredibly hard. The fight for Caen continued fiercely, but the town was eventually taken by the Allies. And then it was on to Falaise, where the Germans dug in once more. Eventually their forces were overwhelmed, but not before many good men died. After that, they were on the run. Along with the rest of the Allies, we continued to move south, and eventually they were driven out of Paris in August. The war continued as the Germans continued to retreat. Less than a year after D-Day, they surrendered.”
He lay back quietly. I’m sure he was exhausted after his lengthy tale. I sat and looked at him as the nurse walked past the door of his room, the hospital eerily quiet this late at night. I watched her go by, and then turned back to him and said one word, “Johnny?”
“Yes, Johnny,” he said softly as he looked at me. “You know, son, I shot my gun many times during the war, and I may have actually hit someone sometime; I’ll never know. The one thing I do know is that with what happened that day in Caen, Johnny is the only man I know for sure that I killed.” He paused for a second. “It was kind of funny, this Italian guy who always called me ‘brother’; he actually became closer to me than either of my brothers. This was a young man who risked his own life on the beach to save Murphy’s; I don’t think I could have done that. He stuck up for Rusty; for all of us. He was a good man.”
I could see his eyes were now brimming with tears as he talked about his long-lost friend.
“You know, I’ll never know if he would have lived that day. Everybody told me he would have died; with the extent of his injuries there was nothing that could have been done to save him. But I…..I’ll never know for sure. Every time I look at my face in the mirror, I wonder…..I wonder if Johnny might have lived if I’d not done what I did.”
In my father’s eyes I could see the pain he’d been living with for all these years. I felt my heart swell with longing to help him. I wished I could reach inside him and take some of that pain away, to help share the burden of guilt he’d carried for so long.
“Dad, you did what you had to do. No one can ever question that you did anything wrong.”
“I know….I know, that’s what I keep saying to myself.” He paused. “I look in that mirror every day and wonder about what happened, and then I try to be the best man that I can be. I remembered what Johnny had done for his sister, for his family, and what he’d done for that young girl at the tavern. He always wanted to do the right thing, and I always thought if I can just try to do that, too, maybe I’d be okay.”
“You did, Dad. You’re a good man. Mom loved you, and we all love you for what you’ve done for all of us.”
He smiled, a soft tired smile, but the look on his face told me he was happy to hear what I’d said.
“What happened to those other guys from your unit? Did you keep in touch with them after the war?”
“Well, Sam ended up being a Member of Parliament. Yep, he kept his seat for close on thirty years before a heart attack got the best of him. Chester ended up owning a small moving company in his hometown and he died a few years back. Harry, Harry the farm-boy, he died when a drunk driver smashed into his pick-up truck just a few years after the war. He never saw it coming.”
“What about Rusty? Did you ever hear anything more from Rusty?”
Another smile appeared on his face and his eyes lit up as he thought about Rusty. “I never did hear from Rusty himself, but a few years back I got a letter from his wife. She’d tracked down my name and address through the war archives office. The writing in the letter she sent me looked like it had been written by a child. With the trouble she had with spelling and grammar, well, I figured she was a lot like Rusty herself. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a nice sweet caring woman, just the kind of person Rusty needed; someone who he could love, and who loved him.
“She told me that Rusty had died about a month before she wrote me the letter. Cancer got him, too. They’d gotten married a year or so after the war and Rusty ended up working his whole life at his dad’s lumber yard. His wife said they had a nice little place right on the ocean, just like Rusty always wanted. They’d had one little girl. She told me Rusty had been a wonderful father, doting on that girl like nobody’s business. I guess after what had happened with that little girl in France, Rusty must have cherished the opportunity he’d been given to watch over one of his own.” He paused and looked at me, a little twinkle in his eye. “So I guess with his wife, Rusty did get to kiss a pretty girl again, just like he said he wanted. And since they ended up having that child together, I’m sure he managed to get a few more of those boners he liked so much too.”
He gave a little chuckle and I smiled along with him.
“She told me Rusty had always talked fondly of me, and what a good friend I had been to him during his time in the war. She just wanted to tell me that, and to let me know what a good man Rusty had been his whole life and how much she loved and missed him. You know, I missed him, too.”
He sat quietly for a moment, and I knew he was thinking back to those times in France.
“What about Helen? Did you ever go back to see if you could find her?”
He shook his head with a wry smile on his face. “No, when I was over there, I always thought I’d try to find her when I got back. But within just a few weeks of being home, I met your mother at a Victory dance. From the first time I spun her across the dance floor and pulled her close to me, I knew I had my dance partner for life. I never once thought about trying to find Helen after that.”
I smiled and nodded, remembering how much my parents loved to dance, even as they got older. At weddings and family functions, we used to just sit and watch them. They always looked so happy and in love when they danced.
“There’s another reason I’ve told you all this,” he said, jolting me out of my little trance. I stared at him, uncomprehending. He didn’t wait for me to guess. “The painting.”
Of course! Enthralled by his story of what had happened once they joined the fight at Caen, I’d forgotten all about the p
ainting Johnny had stolen.
“What….what happened to it?”
“After everything that happened that day in Caen, I’d almost forgotten about the painting. Johnny had never mentioned it to me again after that first time he’d shown it to me. Later that day, I decided to put his lighter and the letters from his sister in my own knapsack. I wanted to make sure they got back to his family if I managed to make it home.
“I figured I’d better check through his knapsack to see if there was anything else of value in there that needed to go back to them. That’s when I discovered the painting, folded up and hidden inside an undershirt in the bottom of his pack.
“My first thought was to take it to Capt. Crocker and turn it in, but then I thought about how I would explain how I’d come to have it. Johnny’s family had suffered enough, what with his father’s death such a short time ago and now his own death; I didn’t want his family to suffer any shame if it became known that he’d stolen it. Unable to think of anything there on the spot, I slipped it into the bottom of my own knapsack and thought I’d try to figure out a different solution later.
“The next thing I knew, days had gone by and I still hadn’t done anything about it; and then weeks. At this point, I realized if I tried to turn it in, I might have some serious explaining to do myself. So I just left it where it was, deep in the bottom of my knapsack, all the way until the war ended.
“Near the end of the war, Capt. Crocker informed us that during some Allied bombing in Magdeburg, Germany, a museum had been hit, causing a major fire. They’d found the charred remains of some looted pieces of artwork stored in the museum basement, including some of the missing pieces on that manifest from the Church in Poirier. I realized then that the painting Johnny had stolen would now be considered lost forever. It brought me some relief to know that nobody was out there hunting for it.”
He closed his eyes and I thought he might have fallen asleep. He looked so weak, I was afraid he might not ever wake up without telling me more.
“So….so what happened to it?”
“Oh,” he said, looking somewhat startled as he opened his eyes. “I decided that maybe if I took it home, I’d figure something out. When I got home, I wondered if I should give it to Johnny’s family like he wanted, but that didn’t seem right. Until I could figure out what to do with it, I just knew I couldn’t give it to them.
“I visited them and gave his mother the lighter he’d gotten from his father. His sister cried when I handed her the letters Johnny had kept, but they were grateful for my visit. I told them how valiantly he’d fought, and what a good friend he had become to me. I never said one word about the painting.
“I thought many times about turning it in, but then I was worried about having to explain how I’d come to have it; for both Johnny’s sake and mine by this time. And then I thought about trying to mail or send it back anonymously to the rightful owners; but I was so worried it might get lost that I never did.
“So a year went past, and then another, and pretty soon it became like one of those family secrets that nobody ever talks about. It was something that was always there, lurking in the background, but never talked about.”
“What did Mom say?”
“This is the only thing I ever kept from your mother. She never knew, right up to the end.”
He lay back again and closed his eyes, the effort from narrating his lengthy tale having exhausted him.
“Here, Dad,” I said as I turned the straw from the water container towards him. “Have another drink.”
He sipped at the straw as his hollowed eyes flicked open; I’d never seen him look so tired.
“So you still have the painting?” I asked once he’d finished his drink.
He nodded as his eyes fixed on mine. “I had to let you know. You know that area under the stairs where we keep the Christmas decorations?” I nodded. “On the backside of the wall separating that little cubby-hole from the family room you’ll find an angled sheet of drywall covering the wall studs.” I nodded again, knowing exactly the place he was talking about; our family cat had given birth to kittens in that confined little space many years ago.
He coughed a couple of times. I grabbed a tissue and wiped his mouth for him as his eyes closed once more. I waited a few seconds before he finally opened them; that sure, intelligent look that I knew so well in his eyes once again. “I need you to do what I couldn’t all these years.” His voice was starting to fail now, sounding even weaker than it had already become.
“What….what do you want me to do?”
“You’ll know.”
He lifted his hand slightly as his eyes closed. I took his hand in mine, and with his whole body wizened into submission by the cancer, it felt like I was holding onto a trembling bird. I could clearly see the bluish veins and frail bones beneath the parchment-like skin of his hand and fingers. As he pressed his palm into mine, I could feel how incredibly soft it was. I remembered in the early part of his story how he’d felt when he’d shaken his own father’s hand; his surprise at the softness of it. Now as his hand touched mine, it made me feel the same way, wondering if I’d inherited the same trait.
I held his hand, held it until it started to turn cold.